YORK, Maine — The Ellis Park Board of Trustees on Thursday unveiled a plan to rebuild and expand the existing public restroom facilities at Short Sands Beach.

The existing facility, constructed in the 1970s, is slated to be upgraded to a 2,300-square-foot building in an area sensitive to state and town shoreland and dune considerations.

The Ellis Park Board of Trustees, which oversees Short Sands Park, has been trying to build a new restroom since 2000, Chairman Bill Burnham told the Planning Board. Until this year, Department of Environmental Protection regulations allowed them to rebuild in the same footprint, but not to expand, Burnham said.

The project is scheduled to be done by May, to open in time for the summer season, he said.

The board on Thursday unanimously accepted the plan as complete.

The new building is no farther seaward than the existing facility, said engineer Steve Towne. Access will be from a center hallway, accessed by a raised paver, for safer access from the busy parking lot, he said.

Burnham raised the controversial issue of Penstock Road, a road that may or may not legally exist in front of Joan’s Beach & Gift and the Fun-O-Rama. While the existence of Penstock Road does not affect the restroom application, Burnham presented the Planning Board with a letter from Ellis Park attorney Jon Doyle that said, “We are concerned that the record not indicate directly or indirectly that we acknowledge the existence of Penstock Road for legal reasons until we resolve this.”

The town has Penstock Road on its Geographic Information Systems map, according to Towne. The road has shown up on town plans for work going on in Short Sands Beach.

New Planning Board member Al Cotton said he remembered the road from the mid-1960s, when he used to work in a chamber of commerce building on Penstock Road. When the chamber building was taken down, the area was paved for parking, he said.

In other business

The Planning Board determined Thursday it had no jurisdiction to review a proposed York Colonial Center of retail, office space and apartments.

The two-story building has already been built in the footprint of a structure torn down at 4 Route 1, near the Kittery town line. The building has yet to receive an occupancy permit, according to Planning Board members.

The reason board members will not review the plan, they said, is that the applicant wants to hook into town sewer, and according to state law, that request should go before the Board of Selectmen. In addition, the town’s comprehensive plan does not allow sewer extensions for the purpose of facilitating new development in that section of Route 1, Town Planner Christine Grimando said in a memo to the Planning Board.

The question is whether a teardown and rebuild on the same footprint constitutes new or existing development, she said.

Property owner John Gattuso of Sea Coast Properties Holdings LLC proposes a 6,624-square-foot retail and office building on the first floor, with 20 apartments on the second floor, in the footprint of a former red building used as a second-hand furniture store.

Project representative Chris Baudo said after the meeting that he disagreed with the opinion of the Planning Board that it could not review the application, but he said the next step is to go before selectmen.